We are required to take the shuttle back out to the USAP center at the airport to be issued some more per diem. Zondra and Wesley recruit me to go out to the hot springs and we rent a car for the day. Zondra is a 4th year returnee and has apparently traveled a lot on the South Island. She recommends skipping Hanmer Hot Springs as being too commercialized. Instead we are on our way to Muriua (spelling?) Hot Springs, It's a Japanese themed hot springs with outdoor and indoor pools, a hotel and restaurant. It also is an hour further and gets us over Lewis Pass, a bit towards the west side of the island. It begins raining hard and the classic New Zealand braided rivers have obviously risen a lot and turned muddy, overwhelming the milky glacial color of lower water conditions. Sort of reminiscent of the rivers coming down out of the east side of the Andes into the Amazon Basin.
The hot springs is a wonderful place, though the water in the warmest pool is not as hot as I thought it might have been and the other two are pretty cool. A good soak and we talk to several young couples. One couple is an American and a Ukrainian who've been traveling together since Israel several months ago. Another is an American student studying in Christchurch with a Kiwi from Auckland studying landscape architecture there, too. He's had an interesting program designing gardens based on Kiwi, Aussie, Indian, and Indonesian models and had to include at least 10 plants from each area that would survive and thrive in New Zealand. It takes a bit to get him talking, but when he opens up he's got a lot to say. They did a project to redesign a part of the Botanical Gardens in Christchurch, but it hasn't been acted on as of yet.
We headed back to Christchurch and along the way stop at a beautiful, long, black small-gravel beach that is almost deserted and which stretches for miles in both directions. Wow! Since we have the car until the morning we decided to do a bit more and went across Christchurch to the port city of Lytlleton, which is supposed to be charming. It is. Some neat old buildings, probably looking like Christchurch might have looked before they started replacing the charmers with the concrete. Nice bright colors, friendly people, many of them counter-culture types. We had been told to go to a fish and chips place while out there and we asked in a video rental store. We got a great recommendation and sought it out. Very, very busy, a good sign. NZ$8 for breaded blue cod fish filet the size of both your out-stretched hands and a pile of good chips. Both very inexpensive (unlike the rest of the Kiwi meals I've had) and the best fish and chips I've ever had. While waiting outside for our order we struck up a conversation with a woman who, it turns out, works for the Antarctic Heritage organization, whose mission is to repair and conserve the huts down there. All the artifacts down there have been rearranged by people over the years and, despite popular misconceptions, are not laid out as they left them. Even the dead penguin laying on the table at one of the huts was put there by a later visitor who thought it looked good that way. When they started one of the huts had filled with ice to the ceiling and had to be carved out. They're now replacing flooring and sealing roofs.
When we got back, there was a notice in the room that the flight was on for tomorrow and the shuttle is set for 0645. To the Ice!
The hot springs is a wonderful place, though the water in the warmest pool is not as hot as I thought it might have been and the other two are pretty cool. A good soak and we talk to several young couples. One couple is an American and a Ukrainian who've been traveling together since Israel several months ago. Another is an American student studying in Christchurch with a Kiwi from Auckland studying landscape architecture there, too. He's had an interesting program designing gardens based on Kiwi, Aussie, Indian, and Indonesian models and had to include at least 10 plants from each area that would survive and thrive in New Zealand. It takes a bit to get him talking, but when he opens up he's got a lot to say. They did a project to redesign a part of the Botanical Gardens in Christchurch, but it hasn't been acted on as of yet.
We headed back to Christchurch and along the way stop at a beautiful, long, black small-gravel beach that is almost deserted and which stretches for miles in both directions. Wow! Since we have the car until the morning we decided to do a bit more and went across Christchurch to the port city of Lytlleton, which is supposed to be charming. It is. Some neat old buildings, probably looking like Christchurch might have looked before they started replacing the charmers with the concrete. Nice bright colors, friendly people, many of them counter-culture types. We had been told to go to a fish and chips place while out there and we asked in a video rental store. We got a great recommendation and sought it out. Very, very busy, a good sign. NZ$8 for breaded blue cod fish filet the size of both your out-stretched hands and a pile of good chips. Both very inexpensive (unlike the rest of the Kiwi meals I've had) and the best fish and chips I've ever had. While waiting outside for our order we struck up a conversation with a woman who, it turns out, works for the Antarctic Heritage organization, whose mission is to repair and conserve the huts down there. All the artifacts down there have been rearranged by people over the years and, despite popular misconceptions, are not laid out as they left them. Even the dead penguin laying on the table at one of the huts was put there by a later visitor who thought it looked good that way. When they started one of the huts had filled with ice to the ceiling and had to be carved out. They're now replacing flooring and sealing roofs.
When we got back, there was a notice in the room that the flight was on for tomorrow and the shuttle is set for 0645. To the Ice!
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